


My kind's your kind

by neonetc



Category: Lemonade Mouth (2011)
Genre: F/M, Reunions, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:04:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2731808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonetc/pseuds/neonetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day they broke up, Wen rode his bike over to her house like he always did and they sat in the backyard like always and he looked at her like she was a piece of fragile china.</p>
<p>Olivia never wants to be looked like that again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My kind's your kind

**Author's Note:**

> This is a lil bit of self-indulgence inspired by my love of "Lemonade Mouth" and Wen's freckles. I hope you enjoy it.

When Olivia White was 15 years old, she thought a lot of things were going to last forever.

She never would’ve dared, back then, to imagine an end to Lemonade Mouth.  Back then, Lemonade Mouth meant something, maybe everything.  It meant having a voice and reaching for the stars and a million other cheesy things that make Olivia cringe a little bit now.  But back then, Lemonade Mouth was the most important thing in her world.  They made two albums before Olivia graduated high school, and then she wanted to go to college, and that was that.  Lemonade Mouth was over.

She and Wen, they lasted a little bit longer.  She really thought he was the one, back when she was 15, 16 years old and believed in things like the one.  But now Olivia is a 22 year-old college graduate with a useless degree and her grandma is gone and her dad is dead too, and Wen is just a memory, the kind that haunts you at night, sneaks into the quiet of your room when you’re trying to sleep and whispers _what if_ in your ear.  

She remembers it like it was yesterday, the last moment they were WenandOlivia, WenandLiv.   She’ll never forget the way Wen looked at her when she told him she’d gotten into Berkeley, like she’d snapped his heart clear in two.  She knew then that they were going to break up, though they didn’t, not for another two weeks, when Wen rode his bike over to her house like he always did and they sat in the backyard like always and he looked at her like she was a piece of fragile china.

Olivia never wants to be looked like that again.

In college, she dates two boys.  Logan studies political science and international relations.  He is a year older than her, and after graduation, he leaves for Africa with the Peace Corps.  Olivia doesn’t miss him, because he always kissed her like he had something better to be doing.  The second boy is a redhead, and it only lasts a month because Olivia can’t stand to look at him.  He reminds her too much of Wen.

Wen: who did nothing better than speak softly to her when she was sad, except make her laugh.  She sees him again, the summer after her first year at school.  He’s stayed local, gone to the state school, and it’s changed him only slightly, altered him more in fashion choices than anything else.  He’s happier now, too, less bitter about his father’s new marriage, less bitter about losing her.  

They meet for lunch one afternoon and though it’s been a year, it’s so easy to fall back into old ways.  Olivia’s thighs stick to the plastic of her chair and sweat beads along her neck, but she can’t bring herself to care, because Wen is smiling at her like they’ve never been apart.  She can’t rid herself of the thought, though, that at the end of the summer she will have to leave again.  So she doesn’t let herself kiss him when they part ways, even though she wants to.  Desperately wants to.  She doesn’t see him again.

After graduation, Olivia moves to San Francisco, into an apartment she can barely afford with one of her friends from school, an angry hipster type who’s miraculously gotten herself a job with an ad agency.  Olivia, meanwhile, works at a bookstore and a coffee shop, the ultimate liberal arts graduate, while she decides if she ought to go to grad school or not.  Every night she comes home with sore feet, and Lucy, the cat Wen gave her all those years ago, looks at her with disappointed eyes.

_I thought you’d be better than this_ , Lucy seems to say.

Stella calls out of the blue one Sunday evening: she’s getting married in LA in a month.  It’s legal there now, she says, and she wants Olivia to be there, to be one of her bridesmaids.  Olivia is shocked, but she can’t say no.  She and Stella are the kind of facebook friends that always like each other’s profile pictures and promise to grab lunch when they’re both in the same place, but never actually do.  But Olivia knows that they’re bonded forever, because Lemonade Mouth was something special, so she can’t say no.

When her plane lands in Los Angeles, the sun is just setting, lighting up the sky in a beautiful range of reds and yellows and pinks.  Olivia thinks of the last time she came to Los Angeles, nearly six and a half years ago, to sign the Lemonade Mouth record deal.  Wen sat beside her on the plane and held her hand as they landed, though he refused to look her in the eye.  They weren’t together yet at that point, just dancing around each other, both waiting for something to happen.  

And now: Olivia is 22 years old and a thousand things have changed.  Olivia wears her hair shorter, above her shoulders now.  She remembers the day her roommate cut it for her, in the middle of their tiny kitchen with newspapers on the floor to catch the falling hair.  She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see.  

Mo picks her up from the airport in a practical SUV and talks without pause the whole way back to her house.  She’s dating this music producer, one of the hottest guys in the industry under age 30, she says.  He spends most nights over at her place, and she never goes to his because he doesn’t know how to clean.  She graduated from UCLA with a degree in music theory and now plays in the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra.  She’s happier than she’s ever been, Olivia can tell.  

“How about you?” Mo asks.  “Tell me everything.”

They are sitting in traffic in the middle of the freeway, surrounded by a sea of cars.  It makes Olivia feel trapped.

“Not much to tell,” Olivia says.  She looks at Mo’s nails on the steering wheel, perfectly polished with French tips.  Mo wears all black despite the heat, skinny jeans and a loose knit top, a true LA resident.  She is as glamorous as she was in high school.  

“I don’t believe that,” Mo says.  “You’ve always been destined for greatness, Olivia.”

Olivia doubts that.  The only great thing she’s ever done was Lemonade Mouth.  Aside from that, she is average, normal, boring, and completely without drive.  She is sure, though, that she has disappointed no one more than herself.

Mo’s apartment is big and new, with high ceilings and and fancy countertops and beige everything.  Olivia has the guest room all to herself, and it has its own bathroom with a bathtub.  This is luxury of the kind she hasn’t known since the two years she spent with Lemonade Mouth, touring the country during breaks from school and staying in fancy hotel rooms and eating at overpriced restaurants.  It never meant all that much to Olivia, the money, until it ran out and her mountain of student debt began to grow.

Mo orders Chinese takeout for dinner, and they sit on the couch and eat it from the cartons while watching “Gilmore Girls” like they used to in high school.  The familiarity of Mo’s laughter is comforting, but Olivia knows that things are different now.  Mo’s boyfriend could arrive home at any second and walk through the door, and that’s all it would take to break the illusion.

But the boyfriend doesn’t get home, and Olivia lures herself into thinking that Mo is still her best friend and they’ve still got their whole lives ahead of them, an endless world full of possibility.  Mo opens a bottle of wine and they drink half of it.  Olivia doesn’t like wine very much, but she doesn’t say anything.

In the morning, the sun peeks through the blinds and wakes her up.  Her dress hangs from the closet door, navy blue with an empire waist.  It’s one of the few new pieces of clothing Olivia has bought for herself in the last six months.  

“Just wear something blue,” Stella had said over the phone.  “All the bridespeople will be wearing some shade of blue.”  

In the kitchen, Mo sits drinking a cup of coffee.  She gestures to the box of bagels on the counter and Olivia helps herself.

“Where’s the boyfriend?” she asks as she smears on cream cheese.  Bagels, too, are a luxury she can rarely afford.  

“He left for work already,” Mo says.  “He keeps odd hours.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow.  “He’s not your plus one for the wedding?”

Mo laughs.  “I don’t expect him to be sticking around for very long.  I’m trying not to waste too much energy on him.”

“Oh.”  This perplexes Olivia.  Something seems broken about this attitude, this idea that you can date somebody for right now even though you know you’re not going to be with them forever.  All Olivia has ever wanted is forever.  

“Besides,” Mo continues, “you’re not bringing a plus one either.  We’ll be each other’s plus ones.”

Olivia laughs and burns her tongue on her coffee.  Mo has always been this way: over-dramatic, prone to irrationality, but big-hearted.  Olivia has missed her.

But then Mo grows serious.  “Wen’s going to be there,” she says.  “You know that, right?”

“Sure.”  Olivia’s thought about it, considered it once or twice.  But she knew that if she thought about it too much, she wouldn’t be able to get on that plane yesterday.  Nothing will hurt more, she thinks, than seeing Wen again and knowing there isn’t a future for them.  So she decided, just after Stella called, that she wasn’t going to think about it.  

“And?” Mo asks, eyes wide.  

“And what?”

“Well, it’s been years since you’ve spoken,” Mo says.  “Are you worried?”

“Of course not,” Olivia lies.  She’s gotten better at the lying thing, better at controlling her nerves, her emotions.  “What’ve I got to be worried about?”       

Mo hesitates, then shrugs.  “Nothing, I guess.”

An hour later, they climb into Mo’s SUV, both dressed in blue and hair curled.  The wedding is being held outdoors, in a park, and the sun is shining beautifully.  Olivia fiddles with the radio and anticipates a sunburn.  

When they arrive, Stella launches herself at them for a three-way hug that nearly knocks Olivia off her feet.

“I’m so glad you guys could be here,” Stella says.  She looks beautiful in white, her haircut just as trendy as it was in high school.  Her girlfriend, fiancee, is called Jess.  Jess is like Stella, asymmetrical haircut and lots of ear piercings, but a bit gentler.  Olivia takes a liking to her immediately.   

Stella’s mom comes over and gives Olivia a hug, whispering, “I’m sorry about your loss” in Olivia’s ear.  Olivia’s not sure which loss she’s referring to; she’s had so many over the years.  Her mom, her mom’s cat.  Her dad, her grandma.  Maybe herself, too.

Olivia says “thank you” anyway, soft enough that only Stella’s mom can hear.  Then she and Mo take their places, and the ceremony begins.  

From her place at the front, Olivia has a perfect view of the audience, seated in folding chairs organized into rows on the grass.  It’s a small wedding, and Olivia looks at each face individually, in search of Wen, but he’s not here.  She wonders if maybe Mo got bad information, if he wasn’t meant to be here at all.  Or maybe something’s happened, traffic or a car accident or a missed alarm.  Wen always was prone to lateness.  

And then--he slips into the back row so quietly that she almost doesn’t notice him.  It’s nearly the end of the ceremony, during the vows, and there he is, Charlie just behind him.  Charlie’s hair is shorter now, his face older, but it’s him.  And Wen.  

His suit is rumpled and his face is slightly red, his hair a bit longer than he used to keep it and his pants a bit too short.  But it’s Wen and he looks beautiful, and Olivia feels like she’s 16 again.  Wen knocks the breath right out of her.  Always has.    

She stares at him, can’t help herself.  And then he looks over at her, their eyes meeting.  He smiles slightly, and then he grins, that big shit-eating grin she remembers so well.  She feels herself blush, and then she looks away.

She doesn’t dare look at him for the rest of the ceremony.  When it ends, everything is a blur, people everywhere, everyone wanting to hug the couple.  Mo links arms with her and pulls her off to the side and they watch as the crowd dissipates, everyone leaving to drive over to the reception, which is being held at a bed and breakfast a few miles away.  

“What a beautiful ceremony,” Mo sighs as they walk to the car.  “I can’t wait to get married.”

Olivia laughs.  “Doing that soon, are you?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Mo scoffs.  “Someday, okay?  You and Stell will be my bridesmaids, and you won’t wear blue.”

The bed and breakfast where the reception is being held is beautiful.  It’s the kind of place Olivia might like to live someday, the kind of place that has a grand fireplace and a big kitchen and lots of rooms meant to be filled with children.  Olivia and Mo follow a pathway out behind the building, where canopies and a dance floor are set up.  Fairy lights and flower garlands hang from the trees.

“Wow,” Mo breathes beside her.  “I can’t wait to get married.”

Olivia laughs at that, a deep belly laugh that only her friends have ever been able to bring out.  She can’t imagine Mo married, can’t imagine Mo settling down and having kids.  Mo has always lived too loudly for that.    

“Oh, would you look at that,” Mo says, clicking her tongue.  “Do you think they’re legal yet?”

Olivia follows Mo’s eyes across the lawn to Stella’s brothers--she’s sure that’s who the two tall, blond teenage boys must be, though she hasn’t seen them since they were small.  

“Nope,” she says, elbowing Mo.  “I’m pretty sure they’re not.”  

Mo only shakes her head and laughs, grabbing Olivia’s hand and pulling her toward a waiter carrying a tray of champagne.  The crowd swells around them, dozens of unfamiliar faces, but Olivia is only looking for one.

Wen.

She knows he’s here, though she hasn’t spotted him yet.  The moment she stepped out of the car, her heartbeat sped up and the skin on her arms stood on end.  Her body has always been able to sense his presence like that.  Olivia doesn’t know much about chemistry, but she does know how Wen has always made her feel.  The crowd is loud around her and there’s music playing from somewhere, but she doesn’t hear any of it.  All she can think about is Wen.   

After a few minutes, Stella’s mom ushers everyone to their assigned seats with the clink of her spoon against a glass, and Olivia isn’t surprised to find herself next to Mo and across from Charlie.  Wen’s seat sits empty for a minute, and Olivia stares at it, thinking, _that’s impossible_ , because she knows he’s here, she can feel it, but then he slides into it in a huff, late again, tie askew.

“Hey!” Mo says.  “I can’t believe--”

She’s cut off by Stella’s mom and the wine glass again, announcing that the first course will be served shortly, so Olivia finishes the sentence in her head.   _I can’t believe you’re late again.  That’s so like you, Wen._  Or _I can’t believe we’re all here.  It’s just like old times._  Only not just like.  Never again just like.   

As they wait for their food, Mo quizzes the boys--they will always be “the boys” to Olivia, even though they are technically grown men now--about their lives.  Wen works for an ad agency up in Simi Valley, writing jingles for commercials.  Charlie talks about school--he’s in his final year back home in New Mexico--and the garage band he plays with on the weekends.  

“It’s nothing like playing with you guys, though,” he says.  Everyone smiles, and Wen thumps him on the back, but the words make Olivia want to cry.     

Back when they made the decision to break up, Charlie was the most resistant.  He and Stella, a year younger than the other three, had another year of high school left, and Olivia knew it looked bleak without Lemonade Mouth.  But Lemonade Mouth couldn’t last.  It broke Olivia’s heart.  It broke all five of their hearts, but they didn’t have any other choice.  

Olivia stays silent throughout the conversation, picking at her salad and laughing only when required of her.  She tries not to stare at Wen, tries not to count his freckles to see if he has any new ones, tries not to remember the last time he kissed her.  She knows that the conversation will turn to her at some point, but it happens sooner than expected, just after the waiters clear the salad course.  

“What about you, Olivia?” Charlie asks.  Despite the years, he is still boyish.  Though he is only months younger than herself, Olivia thinks they could be years apart.  “What are you up to?”

“Just biding my time, mostly,” she says.  She fiddles with the napkin in her lap.  “I’m thinking about getting a teaching credential.”  

This is a lie, of course, as Olivia has given very little thought to any such thing, but it satisfies Charlie, who grins enthusiastically.  

“That’s awesome,” he says, still young enough to use the word “awesome” without any irony.  Olivia wonders when she became so bitter.  Was it before or after everyone she loved died?  Before or after the realization set in that she is, for the foreseeable future, well and truly alone in the world?

“I think you’d make a great teacher, Olivia,” Wen says, the first time he’s spoken directly to her.  Olivia snaps up her head and stares at him.  He stares back, contemplative, calm.  There is no malice in his tone.

“Thank you,” she says, because for some reason the compliment means something, even though she doesn’t really want to be a teacher at all.    

Wen smiles and nods, a silent _you’re welcome_ , and the conversation turns to Mo, to her adventures with the producer boyfriend and her gig with the orchestra.  But every once in a while, Olivia feels Wen’s eyes on her, and she can’t help but look at him too.  It’s been so long, and she feels like she has to re-memorize every detail of him just in case she never sees him again.  

After the last course is cleared, Mo and Charlie stand up to go dance, leaving Olivia alone at the table with Wen.  She knew this moment was coming, of course, and it doesn’t surprise her when Wen gets up and comes around the table to take Mo’s seat.  His knee bumps hers under the table, and he doesn’t move it away.

“Hi,” he says softly with a sigh, like he’s been waiting to say it all day.

“Hi,” she answers.  Now that he’s right in front of her, she can see all of his freckles.  She used to like to kiss the ones on the bridge of his nose, but she can’t do that now.  There are a lot of things she and Wen did once that she will probably never get to do again.  On the night during senior year when she lost her virginity to Wen in a hotel room in New York City, she tried in the darkness that night to count all of his freckles.  She wonders now if she’ll ever get to try again.  

“How are you?”  He grips a beer in his hand, brought with him from the other side of the table, but he doesn’t drink it.  Olivia’s own glass of wine, barely touched, sits in front of her.  She thought it improper, for some reason, to order a beer at a wedding, as if drinking wine somehow made her more ladylike, a better bridesmaid.  Stella would scoff at the idea, she knows.  

“Good,” she says, and it doesn’t feel like a lie.  She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, feeling suddenly shy.  “How are you?”

“Good,” he says, smiling.  He leans toward her a little bit, a sign, she knows from countless women’s magazines and romantic comedy films, that he is interested in her.  She never doubted that, though.  “Great.”  

She laughs and smiles back.  They sit in silence for a minute, just watching each other, and Olivia can’t see anything besides Wen.  He has always been able to freeze time like this for her.  Has always been able to make her forget how scared she is of the world.   

And then he returns her to it, quickly, smoothly, as if they’d never left.  

“I heard about your grandma,” he says.  He says it quickly, as if he knows he has to say it and wants to get it over with as quickly as possible.  He reaches up a hand and ruffles the hair at the nape of his neck, like he always used to do when he was nervous.  “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” Olivia says.  She tries not to think about it too much, the fact that she’s a real orphan now, no one left to take care of her.  She tries not to think about how terribly empty she felt when she went through her grandmother’s house alone, sorting everything into two piles, keep and sell, or how it felt to put the house on the market and watch strangers traipse through every weekend, until finally it sold.  Olivia cashed the check to pay off her student debt, just like she hoped her grandma would’ve wanted.  And then she went back to San Francisco.  

“Really, Liv.”

Olivia looks up into his eyes and realizes that he’s staring at her now, not just looking at her but staring at her in the way that he did all those years ago when she told him about her mom.  He’s staring at her like nothing hurts him more than the fact that he can’t make her hurt go away.  

“I’m okay,” she says.  She wants him to stop looking at her like that.  Needs him to stop.  “Really.”

He nods, and looks down at the table, twisting his hand around the neck of his beer.  He hasn’t touched it since he sat down beside her.  “How’s Lucy?”

“She’s doing good,” Olivia says.   _She saved my life_ , she wants to say, but she doesn’t think it would be right to put that on him, to make him feel responsible for that just because he’s the one who gave her the kitten, all those years ago.

But he is responsible for it, him and his way of always making everything feel like it’s going to be okay.  She’s not sure she’d be here today if it weren’t for the knowledge that at every moment somewhere out there in the world Wen is existing, and that mere fact--though there’s nothing mere about it--is worth surviving for.  

“Good,” Wen says.  He looks at her now like there’s something about her he can’t figure out.  “That’s good.”  He pauses.  And then: “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known, Liv.”

She almost laughs at the compliment, laughs at it because it’s so heavy and so, so _false_.  “That’s not true,” she says, shaking her head.  “I’m not brave at all.”  

“No, you are,” Wen says.  He rests his arm on the table in front of her and his other hand holds the back of her chair, and she feels safe, protected.  “You’ll see it someday, I know you will.”  

Olivia doesn’t know what to do besides smile and bump her knee a little bit against his, just so that he knows that she appreciates his words, even if she doesn’t understand them.  

“You still writing songs?” he asks.  He speaks quietly, but he’s so close that she can hear him clearly.  They’re in their own world, just the two of them.  The two of them and their feelings and their history, all they’ve ever been through, hanging right there in the air between them.    

“Not really,” Olivia says, which is a lie.  She has an acoustic guitar at home in San Francisco, leftover from high school.  For the first two years of college, it sat untouched at the foot of her bed.  She was too afraid to touch it, too nervous about what memories playing it again might stir up.  But then her dad died, and there was nobody around to hold her tight and tell her everything was going to be okay.  So she told herself.

She doesn’t play her new songs for anyone.  They are for herself and her cat, and maybe someday, though she likes to pretend otherwise, for Wen.  Maybe everything Olivia has ever done is in part for him.         

“You seeing anyone?” he says suddenly.  He lifts his hand off of her chair and hovers it above her knee.  

The question makes Olivia blush.  Wen has always been able to make her blush.  Wen sets her on fire.  “No,” she says.  “Are you?”

He shakes his head sharply and lets out a sigh.  Relief, she wants to think.

“No.  No,” he says.  And he lets his hand fall.

She feels the weight of it, of his hand that’s touched her in so many places and in so many ways but not for so long, sitting on her thigh just above her knee, warm and solid and familiar.  

“Wen,” Olivia says.  He grins at her and there are so many things she wants to say: _I missed you.  I still love you.  Why did this take us so long?_  She doesn’t know where to start.  

Sudden loud laughter interrupts her thoughts.  Wen’s hand squeezes her thigh briefly and then disappears as Mo collapses into a chair on the other side of the table, red-faced and smiling.  Charlie follows, looking equally gleeful.

“Have fun?” Wen asks.  Olivia turns, angles her body back toward the table, but Mo is looking at her in a way that says, _I already know what you’re trying to hide_.  

“So much fun,” Mo says.  “And yourself?”  She grabs her wine glass and lifts it to her mouth, meeting Olivia’s eyes over the rim.  Mo raises an eyebrow and nearly bursts out laughing when Olivia sticks her tongue out in response, hoping that no one else sees.

“Yeah, just catching up,” Wen says easily.

“Oh yeah?” Mo asks.  

Olivia feels Wen’s hand on her leg again, under the table this time where nobody can see it, and it makes her jump just a bit.  His touch lightens, like he’s going to pull his hand away, so she puts her hand on top of his.  Her lack of hesitation surprises her, because if there’s one thing Olivia knows about herself, it’s that she never does anything without thinking it through first at least once, but probably three, times.

“Yeah,” Wen says, looking at Mo.  “Lots to talk about.”

“I’m sure,” Mo says.  There’s a pause as Olivia watches Wen look at Mo and Mo look at Wen and she imagines the silent conversation that they’re having, about Olivia’s heart and the fissures that have formed on its service since the last time it belonged to Wen.  Olivia can’t decide if she likes it, Mo thinking that she needs to be protected, Wen agreeing to do it.  Olivia has had trouble letting others care for her, she knows, because the redhead she dated in college told her so, and she denied it.  

Her grandma used to tell her that she denied things when they were absolutely true.  She always denied that, too.  

“I wonder when they’ll cut the cake,” Charlie says, oblivious.  Olivia looks over at him, and he’s not even looking at them.  It’s as if he was talking to himself: his eyes are cast across the lawn, toward the head table, where the brides sit with their parents.  

“Soon, probably,” Olivia says.  Wen’s hand, still on her thigh, turns over.  He laces his fingers with hers and squeezes her hand.  

They don’t sleep together that night, though Olivia wants to, and she’s sure Wen does too.  He is staying in a hotel not too far from the B&B where the reception is held, and it’s an awkward car ride back that night, with Charlie in the backseat and Wen’s hand planted on her thigh.  

He’d been nervous when he asked her to come back with him.  Just after Stella’s mom gave her toast, he leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“Do you want to--”

“Yes,” she’d said, before he finished the question.

His hotel room is small, the kind designed for a traveling businessman who returns to his hotel only to sleep.  Wen holds the door open for and she goes inside and is immediately unsure where to stand, where to sit.  There’s a bed and an armchair, a desk and a rolly chair.  One closed door is the closet, the other the bathroom.  Wen’s suitcase sits open on the desk, a poorly-folded pair of jeans visible.  

“I’m sorry, it’s--”

“No, no,” Olivia says, cutting him off.  She’s not sure what he’s trying to apologize for, but she knows that it isn’t necessary.  

Wen scoots around her as if he’s trying not to touch her and takes his jacket off.  He throws it over the desk chair and begins to roll up his sleeves.  

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks.

“No thank you,” Olivia says.  She realizes that she hasn’t moved since she came into the room.  Inaction: something Olivia promised herself ages ago she would put an end to.  Her feet feel stuck to the floor, but she peels them up and kicks of her shoes.  Then she climbs up onto the bed and sits with her legs crossed, like a child on a classroom carpet, ready for story time.  

Wen stands at the foot of the bed, rolling up his sleeves and watching her.  The last time they were in a hotel room together, it was in New York City and they’d just played Madison Square Garden and they had adrenaline pulsing through their veins like they’d never felt before and thought they’d never feel again.  Except -- Wen makes her feel like that.  She can feel her heart beating in her ears now as she looks at Wen and he looks at her, and this is a moment, she knows, that later she will want to keep forever in a song.  

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm?”  

Wen is standing in front of her now, head cocked.  He looks tall and kind and grown, and she wants to touch him.  

“Are you okay?” he repeats.  “You’re staring.”

“So are you,” she says daringly.  Wen makes her unafraid.

Wen grins, big and warm.  He goes to the mini-fridge and pulls out two bottles of water.  Olivia takes the one he holds out to her and opens it, just to have something to do with her hands.  The bed sinks a bit as he sits down beside her, leaning back against the headboard and kicking out his legs.  He’s not touching her, nowhere near touching her, but she can feel him there nonetheless.  She can hear him breathing and can see, out of the corner of her eye, his hand flexing on his thigh.

“I don’t think we should have sex tonight,” he says.

He sounds so nervous, so afraid of her--afraid of _her_ \--that she wants to laugh.  But she doesn’t.  “Okay.”

“No, I mean--” Wen turns and grabs her hand, pulling her forward toward him.  “I want to, I do.  But I didn’t ask you here for that.  I just think you should know that.”

His hand is warm and it makes her brain go a little bit fuzzy, so she tries to blink herself clear.  “I know that,” she says, looking at their linked hands.

“You do?”

She laughs now, laughs out loud, at Wen’s surprise.  “Of course.  We’ve always been on the same wavelength, Wen.”

He squeezes her hand and grins at her, and then he drops her hand and wraps his arms around her, pulling her toward him in one quick motion. Her heart skips a beat from the suddenness of it and the closeness of _him_ , and then she yields and her arms come up to wrap around him too.  

“Missed you, Liv,” he says into her hair.  

“Missed you too,” she says.  She’s been waiting years to say it, she thinks, to have him in her arms again and to be able to say _I missed you_ and not just feel it.  There were moments, 3 AM moments during finals weeks back in college, where she imagined that she’d never see Wen again, that something dreadful terrible awful would happen to him and she’d never be able to see him again because he wouldn’t be there to see.  That was worse, in her imagination, than the alternative, which was never seeing Wen again by her own volition.  

This: this is chance.  This is fate or magic or all the right stars aligning, and it feels completely out of her hands, but she trusts it.

Wen lets her go and she curls against his chest naturally, his arm wrapping around her shoulders.  He plays with the ends of her hair, tickling her bare shoulders.

“How are you, Liv?” he asks after a few minutes.  

She knows what he means.  She knows that he knows that she likes to keep it all bottled up inside until she explodes.  But she doesn’t need to lie this time.

“I’m okay,” she says.  “Really.  I’m okay.”

She doesn’t tell Wen about the nights she spends at home with her cat, crying, or the mornings she has to literally drag herself out of bed, so completely lacking any motivation to get herself out of the dead-end jobs that she hates.  She doesn’t think about those moments now.  Instead she thinks about the good moments, pay days when she gets Chinese takeout for dinner and evenings spent laughing with her roommate about something stupid.  That’s her life and she is living it.

“I’m proud of you, Liv,” he says later, after a few minutes of quiet.  “I’m so proud of you.”

She doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know what he means, but she turns her head up and kisses his chin and repeats his words back to him.  “I’m proud of you, Wen.”

“Did ya ever think we’d end up here?” he asks her with a slight shake of his head.  “Thought I was gonna be in Lemonade Mouth forever, ya know?”

“Yeah,” she says.  “I don’t know that much about forever anymore.  But right now’s pretty good.”

Wen laughs, his big belly laughter vibrating underneath her, and that makes her laugh, though she has no idea what he’s laughing at.  Maybe it’s the absurdity of the situation, the ridiculousness of it, being in a hotel room with your high school boyfriend and it’s been years since you’ve last seen him and a single touch from him sets you on fire but you’re not going to have sex tonight because, though neither of you have said it, you know you’ve got a lifetime to do that.  You’re wary about forevers, but this is one of them.  This is a forever, right in front of you.  Reach out and take it.

“Are you crying?” Wen says suddenly, finger brushing against Olivia’s cheek.  

“I hadn’t realized,” she says, pulling away from him and wiping at her eyes.  They come away black with eye makeup.  “I’m just--this is--a lot?  But in a good way.”

Wen nods, looking relieved, and that makes her smile.  Which makes him smile.  

“I missed your smile,” he says.  He looks at her the way he always used to before he kissed her, and she thinks maybe he’ll kiss her now.  And then maybe they’ll break their promises, change their minds.  But he leaps to his feet.  “Lemme get you a t-shirt, okay?”

“Sure,” she says.  She watches him go to his suitcase and begin digging through it, laughs as he lifts a shirt up to his nose to check its scent.    

“Here,” Wen says, turning around and holding it out.  Olivia’s fingers brush his as she takes the shirt from him.  “You will stay the night?  I didn’t ask, I’m sorry.”    

“Thanks,” she says, instead of answering.  She takes the t-shirt into the bathroom and shuts the door behind her with a soft click.  When she puts it on, it falls mid-thigh, brushing comfortingly against her skin.  It smells like him.  Then she washes the smudged mascara off of her face.  It’s so easy sometimes to look like you haven’t just been crying.

When she comes out, Wen has changed into a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a UNM t-shirt.  She’s never before, she realizes, seen the clothes that Wen sleeps in, because they’ve never spent a full night together.  Is this adulthood, then, not having to worry about asking anyone’s permission?

“Hey,” Wen says, smiling at her.  He’s always smiling at her.  

“Hey,” she says.  She goes over to the bed and slips under the covers before she has a chance to be self-conscious.  She lies down on her side.  Wen shuts off the lamp and lies down beside her, facing her.

They’re quiet for a moment, listening to the room settle.  From the hallway, she hears the muffled _bing!_ of the elevator, followed by drunken giggling.  Under the blankets, Wen’s hand seeks out hers.           

“This isn’t how I thought tonight would end,” Wen says.  

“No?” she asks.  Tonight feels inevitable to her, like everything else has just been a diversion.  This moment is where she is meant to be.

“No,” Wen says.  “I thought you were done with me.”

There is something sad about his tone, something that suggests to her that he has been waiting forever for this moment too.  She searches in front of her for his eyes, but in the darkness she can only imagine them.  She has always loved Wen’s eyes and they way they look at her.  The way they look at the world.

“Of course not,” she says.  “Never.”

“Come here,” Wen says.  She scoots closer and rolls over, allowing him to pull her against him.  Wen’s arm tightens around her shoulder and she curls further into the curve of his body.  She is safe and warm in his t-shirt and his arms, and like that she falls asleep.

When she wakes up, the sun has barely risen and Wen is no longer beside her.  She blinks in confusion for a few moments, and then he comes out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt.  

“Hey,” he says, when he sees her awake.  

“Hey.”  

“I’m sorry,” he says.  He comes toward the bed, running a hand through his hair.  Olivia notices that he’s only wearing one sock.  “I’m sorry, I have to go.  My flight’s in a couple of hours.”

Olivia nods, though she barely understands his words.  Sleep threatens to pull her back into darkness.

“You can stay here as long as you want,” Wen says.  “Just return the keys to the desk before you leave.”  

Olivia wants to say something, wants to say good bye, wants to ask a million questions, but the lure of sleep is too strong.  She doesn’t wake up again until Wen sits down beside her.  She blinks herself awake and looks at him.  

“I have to go now,” he says softly.  

She props herself up on her elbows and wills herself to say something, to say the right thing, though she can’t for the life of her imagine what it is.  But then Wen bends down and kisses her, kisses her like she wanted him to last night.  The angle is awkward and she’s sure her morning breath is terrible, but she wraps an arm around his neck and pulls herself up against him.  And then it’s over and he’s just hugging her, arms around her tight and lips pressed to her cheek.

“I’ll call you,” he whispers.  And then he lets her go.

He does call her, five hours later from the Oakland Airport, where he is walking to his car to drive back to his apartment.  She tries to picture it in her head, his apartment, but she can’t, because she’s never known Wen as an adult.  She doesn’t know what kinds of things he hangs on the wall or how he arranges his books.  She doesn’t know where he keeps the mugs in the kitchen.  There are a thousand things she wants to know, a thousand questions she wants to ask, and when Wen calls her, she knows she has a lifetime ahead of her in which to ask them.

“I know you’re still writing songs,” he says, his voice clear through the phone line.  “And I’m gonna stick around to hear them.”

“Yeah?” she asks, just about all she can manage right now.

“Yeah,” he says.  “And long after that, too.”  

  
  
  


 


End file.
